"A Day in the Life" video idea

My first week in Tena, I posted to facebook a picture of a bus that I had helped push, a field of guayusa I had helped plant, and the blisters on my hand from the day of work. Looking back on those pictures, I realized that they were not how I should have first portrayed Tena. Overall, my first week looked nothing like that. It looked more like 2 other American interns, a house, and a downtown street of Tena. The photos that I uploaded were a depiction of how I thought my time in Tena should look. There should be a stuck bus because we’re in a developing country, there should be a field because I’m working with subsistence farmers, I should have blisters because people use machetes in Ecuador. Each of these represents a stereotype of Tena, Ecuador, that I had before arriving here. So, naturally, these are the things I looked for when I wanted to show my friends where I was.

This brings up two questions for me: how do I see a place without fitting it to my expectations? And how do I portray the place in the most honest way possible? In essence, I want to be honest to myself about where I am and honest to you all as well. So far, my idea to accomplish this is to create a “Day in the Life” video. In this video, I will try to portray the most typical day of my life in Tena. I’ll intentionally go after the people, sounds, and sights that, whether I like it or not, take up much of my experience here. I’d love to see other people’s summer experiences so please feel free to join me in making this kind of video!